SLAVYANKA

“The Dragonfly”

Bird eye view seen from east

Slavyanka is situated at the southern outskirts of St Petersburg along the river Neva, where it meets the Slavianka river. This part of the city has been defined as an important area for urban re-generation and an extensive development has been done in the area. This development area of Slavyanka has been divided into four distinct land parcels, containing residential, commercial and public premises for more than 20 000 new inhabitants. As a part of the commission, Tovatt Architects and Planners also studied future extensions of the development to the southeast, including commercial centre, sports centre and a business park.

The Masterplan forms a structure built around a few strong main structuring elements of high-quality public space, developed in collaboration with the landscape architect Johan Paju: The river-walk towards Neva and its Harbour Square; The River Park along Slavyanka and its Park Square; and a central main street that connects the two squares under the heavy trafficked Sovetsky Prospect, in connection to its tram/main bus stop.

As a second stage of the project, Tovatt Architects and Planners developed two typical blocks as a pilot project in greater detail: one with large tower buildings towards Neva and one courtyard block. The study was done to make sure that the masterplan could be implemented, combining a vey high density with an urban structure, forming a public realm with a human scale. One big challenge was to comply with local parking, fire and sun requirements, and at the same time shape well-defined walking-friendly open spaces in contrast to most similar local high-density developments at the time, creating big mega structures of free standing high-rise volumes and large vast spaces often taken over by traffic and parking.